How Does Radiation Cause Biologic Damage?

Beginning with the accident at Three Mile Island in 1979, a widespread belief has proliferated that all levels of ionizing radiation are dangerous. Since 1980, radiation hormesis studies have shown there is actually a threshold of danger with high level exposures, but below that threshold low dose radiation is essentially safe and quite possibly beneficial to life. Yet, this relatively new, seemingly contradictory understanding of radiation's health effects has gone essentially unknown to the general public. In order to grasp the reasons why, we must again return to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

According to Ecker and Bramesco, the majority of the understanding of the effects of radiation comes from the research from the atomic bombings of the town of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (107). There is a greater effect when a dose of radiation is given all at once rather than over an extended period of time (105), However, as soon as radiation hits an individual there are some immediate effects and more long term effects. Some long issues that has come up due to the radiation of the atomic bomb were the more frequent cases of leukemia, cancer, and cataracts than people who weren’t affected from radiation (Ecker and Bramseco 107). Also, mutations can be a long term effect. Naturally, mutations occur at a low rate. Radiation can increase the number of mutation cases because it is a mutagen (Nasr and Hoyle). Some short term effects would be radiation sickness called acute somatic effects. Acute means severe and somatic means ‘related to the body’. The first signs of radiation sickness are nausea, throwing-up, and fever and

There are many ways for cancer to get in the body, like exposure to uranium and oxidative stress. [8]. When the mechanisms of the body loose the protein Glutathione it leads to making oxygen free radical neutral. Two of the most important proteins in the body are glutathione (GSH) and superoxide dismutase (SOD). Glutathione (GSH) works as an antioxidant [9]. Also, glutathione (GSH) has an important job that removes toxic metals out of the body because glutathione (GSH) has a sulphydryl group. This group strongly binds with toxic metals, effectively [3]. When uranium enters the body, it will reduce glutathione (GSH). When there is a reduction of glutathione (GSH), it leads to an increase of the

Studies have shown that hydroxyl radical is responsible for oxidative DNA damage. Hydroxyl radicals come from the reaction between ascorbate (vitamin C), uranyl acetate, and hydrogen peroxide as illustrated in scheme 1 . The mechanism of DNA damage begins when the reaction between uranyl acetate and ascorbate (vitamin C) makes plasmid relaxation in pBluescript DNA. pBluescript DNA is a phagemid which includes many advantageous sequences for utilizing cloning with bacteriophage. The rate of DNA strand breaks multiply when the reaction between ascorbate (vitamin C), and uranyl acetate increase. In addition, hydrogen peroxide is the end product when there is a reaction between uranyl ion and ascorbate. DNA damage can happen

Radiation comes in different forms and is around us all day sometimes dangerous other times not. Radiation can be used under various categories such as communication, science and medical usage. The main focus surrounding these groups is medical because it is used to findings, test and analyze both treatments and research. Radiation uses X-rays and gamma rays for medical use. For example, X- rays are used identify if bones are fracture or broken. X-rays is usually used during radiology with specialized equipment like computerized tomography, cardiology, mammography and magnetic resonance imagining. Radiation is also used for treatment of diseases or cancer known as therapy. Oncology

Of the liver enzymes that showed elevations in their serum concentrations following irradiation in the current study, only the early increase in the AST level was significant (Fig. 9). ALT is also a marker of hepatic damage, and it is found exclusively in the cytoplasm of cells. In contrast, AST is present in the cytoplasm, which comprises 20% of its total activity, and in the mitochondria, which comprises 80% of its total activity (Rej 1989). While the recruited granulocytes and the gamma irradiation could damage some periportal hepatocytes, irradiation treatment may have a more damaging effect on the numerous large mitochondria that reside within the hepatocytes, which would lead to a greater

Radiation over a long period of time can cause things like cancer. If there is a lot of radiation received in a very short period of time, (like some workers in Chernobyl and Fukishima were exposed to) the effects are much more severe and fast. This is called radiation poisoning, or radiation sickness. If an individual has had acute exposure to radiation, then they will show signs of radiation sickness. Usually, the symptoms include hair loss, burns (on skin) and Nausea. If the dose has been large enough, the person will most likely die within a few months. If the individual is exposed to enough, they can go unconscious and die within an hour.

Physical energy mainly come from different kinds of radiations, including direct exposure to ultraviolet from sunlight, ionized radiation from X-rays and computed tomography (CT) examination we take during clinical diagnosis as well as various radiotherapy for cancer treatment, and even during airline traveling (Hoeijmakers, 2009). On the other hand, chemical genotoxic agents from environment or food intake lead to more severe DNA damage. For instance, mitomycin C, cisplatin and psoralen introduce covalent bonds between bases from same DNA strand, which causes interstrand crosslink lesions; etoposide or camptothecin inhibit topoisomerase I or II, which leads to single stranded breaks or double stranded

My hypothesis was supported because many changes were observed between the two slides we tested. After irradiation cells were broken apart, they were like free radicals. Cells were disorganized, stages of mitoses were paused, and many parts were missing, neither cells had bounds between one another. Such procedures damage the quality of food; they damage the vitamins within the food itself, enzymes and so on. Food irradiation has pluses and minuses. It makes the food we eat less harmful by killing the bacteria’s, viruses, parasites and so on, but it also kills the organic food. It causes natural processes such as cell division to pause or stop, by damaging their DNA. They may kill the bacteria within the food, but they also destroy the quality of food

Given the evidence, it can be concluded that while there are risks that arise with ionizing radiation in medical diagnosis, overall the benefits outweigh the risks, as doctors are able to diagnose various health concerns that would go undetected otherwise. That being said, ionizing radiation should continue to be used in medical diagnosis as they provide valuable medical procedures that can ultimately save

The human body is made up of approximately 80% water (H2O) molecules. When radiation strikes a water molecule it causes radiolysis. Radiolysis is the disassociation of water into an ion pair (H+ and OH-) and two free radicals (H* and OH*). Free radicals are highly reactive, unstable and capable of disrupting bonds and causing deoxyribonucleic (DNA) damage. DNA is the molecule that holds the genetic information needed for cell duplication and is considered the target molecule for radiobiology. Ionization is the removal of an orbiting electron from an atom. There are two effects of ionizing radiation on a cell: indirect and direct. Direct action occurs when DNA is hit by ionizing radiation. Indirect action occurs when free radicals transfer

Radiation effects are mostly to the skin and hair, but severe injuries can extend to the fat and muscle. There are several factors that can affect the severity of the injury and that is total dose which is the time between the radiation exposures and the size of the area being examined. Some other factors that could enhance patient injuries are smoking, obesity, and location of the skin being examined. The range of

As more information becomes available to the public about the detrimental effect of excessive radiation on human health, the United States government has entrusted the NRC with protecting of the public from exposure to nuclear products. To this end, the NRC is constantly putting out

Unlike high dose of gamma radiation, a small dose of radiation had a significant and negative effects on the victims in China. This study strongly proved that gamma radiation negatively affected the health because the accidental Ir-192 gamma radiation caused a variety of cancer even with small doses of radiation: .05 - .65 Gy (Li). Iridium 192 is a radioactive isotope that has a half-life of 73.82 days which means that these radiations may occur rapidly. Also, the victims who were exposed to this radiation had limited knowledge that certain machinery expelled the gamma radiation (Li). 54 people were conducted on a 10-year test to check their health. The method was very simple because the researchers gathered and then studied blood samples, bone marrow, and their T cell subsets (Li). The results revealed basic clinical symptoms such as an increase in dizziness, fatigue, memory loss, insomnia for 90.7 % of the people in the first month, but as time passed by, the study

In this paper, Bhattacharjee et al. focus on studying both the formation of free radicals and the repair of the resulting DNA damage through the development of methods for accurately creating and identifying DNA damage resulting from free radical reactions. Damage to DNA due to free radical reactions can lead to numerous biological issues both on the molecular level and at the level of the organism’s health, causing issues such as carcinogenesis and cell death. According to Bhattacharjee et al., previously existing methods of quantifying DNA damage were restricted to immunological assays. These assays, however, were limited in the ability to detect DNA damage due to a lack of specificity in antibodies used for the assays as well as an